Portrait of a Character – Kevin O’Connor

Kevin O’Connor used to be a real person.

Origins

When a friend with this exact same name passed away, I wanted to commemorate our friendship in fiction. That was back when I was first writing original time travel fiction and so the character was originally created for that set of stories although the personality was virtually identical to how he ended up in the end  and in my Star Trek fanfiction.

Portrayal

Kevin is played by actor John Goodman. I love this actor’s versatility and his chops.

John Goodman as Kevin O’Connor (image is for educational purposes only)

Plus I wanted a fellow who would be larger than life in all respects.

Goodman isn’t just a big guy; he also convincingly portrays sensitive men, and jokesters and I can see him in an engineering and inventive type of role.

Personality

Loving and sentimental, but also with a wicked sense of humor, Kevin is the kind of guy who people love to underestimate. He does not look like a scholar. He does not appear to be creative. How could this big galoot ever be romantic?

Yet he is all of those things.

Hence he is, much like the original, the kind of guy who can go on and on about the Abrahamic mythopaedia. While driving a snow plow.

So mostly human, but part-Gorn on his mother’s side, Kevin weighs about a quarter of a metric ton, but is the most likely, of all of the characters I have ever created, to rescue a baby robin that has fallen out of its nest, and nurse it back to health. Kevin, always, is one of the good guys. Furthermore, he is a remote descendant of Melissa and Doug.

Kevin is also the inventor of the dark matter drive for time ships. Carmen trusts him implicitly. Rick is pals with him. He mentors Deirdre Katzman. And he, along with Otra D’Angelo, is one of the few people who can get through to Levi. Therefore, he is Levi’s direct supervisor.

Relationships

Josie/Jhasi Tantharis

Ashley Olsen as Josie O’Connor (née Jhasi Tantharis) (image is for educational purposes only)

From the moment Kevin meets Jhasi, that’s it. There is no one else in the universe. And never mind that she’s Aenar, she’s tiny and she’s beautiful. She loves him, too.

Hence in the fullest act of love, Kevin cares for her, even as she becomes sicker and sicker with Piaris Syndrome, which eventually kills her. The worst part is when she fails to recognize him, in the final weeks of her life.

Despairing, he vows he will never love again. And he almost doesn’t.

Yilta

This Calafan engineer pursues him doggedly. Because she senses that he’s in mourning and he is hurting, but he has essentially written off life.  She reminds him that he’s got a lot of time left. It’s an awfully long time to be alone, and to close himself off from everyone.

Gently and patiently, she works on him. And eventually, he asks her if she would mind if they went to dinner and he talked, a bit, about Josie. Yilta has had her own bereavements, so she is all right with this.

Mirror Universe

There are no impediments to Kevin existing in the Mirror Universe.

Mirror Kevin (John Goodman)

What would he be like?

Unlike his prime universe counterpart, I think he could be a ruthless killer, perhaps a bounty hunter or an outlaw of some sort. As someone who is mechanically inclined, he might even be a saboteur.

Would he have met Josie? Hard to say. I tend to keep the same people together in both universes, if that’s at all possible, as that helps to ensure that there can be future generations of counterparts.

Quote

“If, um, strictly hypothetically speaking, if we were to, uh, to, um, have a meal somewhere outside of the Commission ….”

Upshot

I love this character, and he’s been to a lot of places. So he will crop up in more, no doubt.